A Photo Blog of Coupeville, WA, Ebey Reserve and Whidbey Island

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Month: April 2013

When I left my house this morning for my walk it was cloudy and spitting a wee bit. After the first quarter mile it was sprinkling. At the one mile mark it started raining and I beat feet for home. It’s kind of hard to take pictures in the rain and keep the lens clear. So that’s now my day started with a two mile walk.

But as the saying goes, “April showers brings May flowers. So being the last day of April I thought I’d talk a quick glimpse ahead to May and it looks quite pretty. I managed to get these flowers on my shortened walk, enjoy.

Red Rhododendron

Pink Rhododendron

Euphirbia Characias; Species Wulfenii

Pink Azalea

Perennial with Orange and Yellow Flowers

Sorry I don’t know what those last ones are but I thought they were pretty.

So good bye April here’s looking forward to nicer weather.

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This mornings walk has been canceled due to high winds. It’s blowing 20 MPH, gusting to 40 MPH and I’m a fair weather walker. Not only that it’s snowing, so to speak.

The neighbors behind us have two huge cherry trees and the winds have carried the cherry blossoms over onto our deck. It really looks like snow although at 45 degrees F it’s not.

Since I don’t have any photos from todays walk I’d like to share Coupeville’s Saturday Market. Every Saturday, starting in April and going through October, local farmers, crafts people and artists set up tents in one of our large parks and sell their wares. last Saturday was the first one we’ve gone to this year but will go to many more. It was sprinkling off and on so the crowd was not too big and because it’s still early in the year there were not as many “vendors” as there will be later on this summer. It runs from 10:00AM to 2:00 PM, check it out sometime.

So here’s kind of an overall shot of the market.

There were two produce vendors sharing the same spot, Willowood Farm and Prairie Bottom Farm. We bought some radishes from them but everything looked great..

Next stop was for some Sour Dough Bread, and boy is theirs good. Coyote Bakery bakes it fresh every Friday just before the market.

Then you need a little honey to put on the bread. Round To It has just about the best honey you can find. Here Marilyn tastes their Fireweed Honey which we bought.

Then there’s the knot guy who makes all kinds of interesting things using mostly rope tied into different kinds of knots, very interesting.

I bought some Blueberry BBQ Sauce at Hunter’s Moon Blueberries. I can’t wait to bar-b-que some salmon using it.

This lady shows up every year selling frozen salmon and other seafood. What’s interesting is she pulls this 250 pound cart with her bicycle. It’s a modified Surly, 27 speed bicycle. She says it rides pretty good but it’s slow going up hills, ya think? In the background you can see Hot Rock Pizza. It’s a mobile brick pizza oven with the fire going inside. I can’t imagine how much that must weigh but it’s worth it, the pizzas are great!

And that is our little Saturday Market. I’ll cover it again later on in the summer when things are really busy.

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While I don’t walk on the weekends I usually have some excess pictures that I’d like to share. The first one is a Pieris Japonica (Mountain Fire Pieris) bush. I found it in town on 4th street.

While I’m on the subject of pretty flowers I saw this flowering Japanese Cherry tree against a backdrop of a beautiful old house at the corner of Broadway and Coveland.

An interesting side note about this house. Most days as I walk past this house I see smoke coming out of a small chimney. Rudy, a nice older gentleman, cooks on an old cast iron wood burning stove and he’s usually making coffee about that time. I love quaint towns.

Out on Ebey Rd., south of town, there is an old heritage farm. I believe it’s the John Gould House/Smith Farm built around 1886. Unfortunately it’s not in the greatest of shape but I think the farm is on the Ebey’s Forever Fund to be preserved. This is one of the outbuildings in the morning sunlight.

Across the street from the outbuilding is the Sherman Pioneer Produce farm. They have a bunch of old rusting equipment “planted” all over the place. I really enjoy looking at the old machines. This farming piece caught my eye, again in the morning sun. I’m not sure what it is, any ideas?

And finally from the same farm a “Trebuchet”. Who’d ever thought that you’d find one of these in the Ebey Prairie. The Sherman Farm is very popular in the fall for all the great pumpkins they grow. While I’ve never seen it I’m sure they use it for “Punpkin Chunkin“.

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This morning’s walk took me about three miles out Madrona Way to the Penn Cove Mussel Farm. Madrona Way is the main road that goes west out of Coupeville.

What’s a Mussel Farm you ask? Well it’s a bunch of platforms floating on the water with lines hanging down into the water. Each line has a number of round plastic plates on which the mussels grow and thrive. The thorough flushing of Penn Cove by tidal changes keeps the water pristine and perfect for their growth.

Before we get to the Mussel Farm I went past a whale of a garden.

These whales area welded steel art and they seem to keep adding to the pod.

I also saw this lonely old bench looking out toward Penn Cove. I can only imagine the stories it can tell from people sitting on it sharing love and stores of days gone by.

This anchored sailboat caught my eye. It was an overcast morning with beach clouds that hadn’t burned off yet. That kind of lighting makes for great pictures. I hope you agree.

Finally I got to the Mussel Farm. There are the rafts the grow the mussels. Founded in 1975 Penn Cove Shellfish Company started growing and cultivating mussels in Penn Cove. Since then they have become the largest mussel farm in the United States. Each raft supports 900 to 2,500 lines and yields up to fifty pounds of mussels on each. You can read more at Penn Cove Shellfish Company.

I took a small side-road that goes right down to the beach where they offload the boats that harvest the mussels. From there I had a good view of the workers getting ready for their days work.

I’ll get into the whole Mussel Farm story in a future blog.

I’m always on the lookout for a “photo-op” and this “Fresh Smelt” sign caught my attention.

While down at the beach I thought these beach houses looked really pretty in the subdued light.

An that wraps up my week of walking. I generally don’t walk on the weekend but I may take that opportunity to upload some other photos I took during the week that didn’t previously make the cut.

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This is the first post of my new Blog about Coupeville, Washington and the surrounding area. During my daily walks around Coupeville, Ebey Reserve and Whidbey Island I take many photos and enjoy sharing the beauty of the area and the stories that go along with this historic area.

I hope you enjoy my photos and comments. I look forward to your comments as well. There are many stories about the area and some are founded and some are not. I would like to keep this blog as accurate as possible so if you have information that corrects the historical statements I make I’d love to hear from you.

If you would like to be notified when I publish a new blog just click the button to the right and add your email address.

I hope you share this blog with your friends on Facebook.

So on that preamble, here goes!

Todays walk from Coupeville to Ebey’s Landing, a 7 1/2 mile round trip from one side of the island to the other. The first thing I noticed was the graffiti around town. Remember, Coupeville is a very small historic town with great respect for the area. So here it is.

Apparently spring has bitten some young fellow prompting him to post a message in the highway overpass walkway. These are Styrofoam cups that people, from time to time, poke into the wire mesh. It must be Prom time as I believe it says “Iris —> Prom I Love U”.

And then there’s the ‘Message Rock” at the school. It is sort of like a “Tweet” in that it presents a short message and is constantly changing. This morning I guess “Amanda” turned 16.

If that’s all we have for graffiti I’m a happy guy.

Moving further out on the Prairie I believe I found a gentleman farmer. Back in Nebraska, where I grew up in the 1950’s the farmers would take a roll of toilet paper with them on the tractor or get creative (use your imagination here) when they needed to relieve themselves. This guy has placed a Porta Potty out in the middle of the field. My oh my how times have changed.

On a lighter note, when I reached Ebey Landing I couldn’t resist looking across Admiralty Inlet to Port Townsend. The Red Arrow is where I was looking.